Use in Civil Law Countries
| This section needs additional citations for verification. |
Plea bargaining is extremely difficult in jurisdictions based on the widespread legal system known as civil law. This is because unlike common law systems, civil law systems have no concept of plea—if the defendant confesses; a confession is entered into evidence, but the prosecution is not absolved of the duty to present a full case. A court may decide that a defendant is innocent even though they presented a full confession. Also, unlike common law systems, prosecutors in civil law countries may have limited or no power to drop or reduce charges after a case has been filed, and in some countries their power to drop or reduce charges before a case has been filed is limited, making plea bargaining impossible. Furthermore, many civil law jurists consider the concept of plea bargaining to be abhorrent, seeing it as reducing justice to barter.
Read more about this topic: Plea Bargain
Famous quotes containing the words civil, law and/or countries:
“The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)